


Accidental Fieldwork

by PudentillaMcMoany



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 12:20:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5416865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PudentillaMcMoany/pseuds/PudentillaMcMoany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A prince and a cartographer walk through a forest. Geography is discussed,  the cartographer gets lost and finds himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accidental Fieldwork

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in a very long time! I felt a bit rusty but wanted to try my hand at writing in english, which is why this is not an original work, but the translation (albeit slightly modified) of one of my old fanfictions. It was beated by Ennead13x, who is amazing.

_Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things._

The cartographer wrote the last part of his introduction, then he neatly placed his quill beside the book, already bound in vermillion. He sighed a devoted sigh, and when he closed the book he gently caressed the cover where -when the work was finished- his name would be engraved.

He was writing a revolutionary work, and he knew it. He had been dreaming about it for years, well before his prince had called him to design the map of the kingdom. The map was no doubt an ambitious project, a suitable corollary of his manual of geography, but a corollary nonetheless- which somehow gave the measure of his work of redaction.

He didn’t sleep at night, burning with the scorching passion of a lover. Inside him he knew he was right (and posterity would recognize it); his work would reinvent geography and philosophy too. He envisioned his book, The Compendium of Universal Geography, as a small-scaled cosmos, tidy and efficient; mystical like the complicated mechanisms of a clock, so simple once you’ve unraveled their mysteries.

For the first time, thanks to him, maps would be traced not only of places, but of faces and feelings and smiles, sectioned and put to order into the musical language of science. His book would make it possible to read other people, and move with ease among them. Even crossing borders would become possible, simple, even. Because this is what maps are for; they make people less scared. One day everything would be mapped, and nobody would be lost, and maybe the world would become a place less sad- _less sad but infinitely smaller_ , the cartographer would think, and in normal days he would busy himself with this or that equation to chase away an inexplicable languor that made his heart as heavy as lead.

The reader should not think that with all his passion for writing and numbers the cartographer had forgotten all about his fieldwork. On the contrary, he loved his job very much. It gave him the gratifying feeling of being useful to other people- _as useful a doctor or a priest!_ , he would think on a good day. He designed his maps with tenderness, and with a last encouragement and a proud twinkle in his eyes he would send them out in the world, in the hand of some brave explorer about to set out to sea or in the saddlebag of a tired pilgrim who would lean on his map as on a walking stick against the hardships of his voyage.

The cartographer would lose himself in these thoughts, and when the hardships of his work made him sad he would feel less alone. And then there was his prince to keep him company, on beautiful summer mornings such as this.

The clock struck ten, and the light, filtering from outside, seemed to gently stir the drapes on the windows. The cartographer shook himself from his thoughts and set out for the hall, where his prince was waiting for him to begin his walk.

 

“A map of the kingdom on a one to one scale would be the most detailed ever conceived.”

“But why, it’s unheard of, grandiose... Regal! Only I am worried about the part of the- of the unraveling, if you want.”

“A problem that the Royal Engineer can no doubt easily solve.”

The prince didn’t reply. He kept walking on the green hillside, his hands behind his back, long black hair gently billowing in the wind. He looked like he didn’t have a care in the world, _and admittedly_ , the cartographer thought, _what problems could a prince have, especially one so beautiful and well-loved as his prince?_ The cartographer followed him down the hill, and while he walked he counted his steps, a habit that came from his job and was ingrained in his life. He liked measuring the distances. Sometimes he thought he would like to measure the nearnesses too.

Measuring your steps, having the sense of measure; wasn’t it the same thing, after all? It was the base of his job and of wisdom, a precious thing protecting him from the venomous slights of the unpredictable. He liked to think of himself as a measured person, an idea that was somehow at odds with the immeasurable aspirations of his science.

“The problem of a map so big is that you can end up losing yourself in it. Or not?”

“My prince, the Royal Engineer...”

“Yes. Well. I don’t understand what it’s for, a one to one map. They say that you are a genius and I want to believe it, but I don’t see how you should put everything in it. It looks like too much information all at once.”

“There’s no such thing as too much information. There are only good maps and bad maps. Mine will be a good map; no one will be lost in it. No one will be lost ever again.”

“Then what’s the fun?”

The cartographer didn’t answer; instead he started to count. He counted his steps and the time as it went by, which were things he liked. He counted to ten because he didn’t want to say something he would regret, which he liked a little bit less. The truth was that there were many questions to which he still didn’t have an answer.

“Here we are!” Announced the prince, with a wide gesture and a satisfied smile. The sunlight played with the bright green leaves of the trees, and with the grey in his eyes. They were in a forest, noticed the cartographer. And then he thought. _How had they ended up being in a forest?_

“Maybe you were too busy counting,” the prince teased him. Which was strange, because the cartographer hadn’t been counting out loud. It was a bit eerie, as if his mind was being read, a bit like being pried open and caressed by the prince’s beautiful hands and his grey, grey eyes. Soothing and yet uncomfortable. “It’s a beautiful forest,” he decided to say, albeit a bit woozily, nodding towards the trees. It was a last resort, not worthy of a man of science, to save the conversation and to save appearances. He wasn’t lying, though. It _was_ a beautiful forest, with the birds chirping in the trees and fallen leaves crunching under his feet. If only he knew where they were! He would have liked to add the forest to his map, if only to go back there sometime, alone with the prince like this morning.

“Will we be in the map too?”

“There are no people in maps.”

“A map with no people is worth nothing.”

“A map _with_ people does not exist,” replied the cartographer, with more vehemence that he would have liked. The fact was that he felt a bit uncertain. Wasn’t that, after all, the sense of his manual? Human cartography and all that he would like to put into practice one day. He didn’t know _how_ , though, and it irked him.

“Then you should invent it.”

The cartographer felt a wave of unease rippling through his back. “Where are we, prince?” He asked, just to change the topic.

“Are you lost?”

“A geographer is never _lost_. It’s just fieldwork. _Accidental_ fieldwork.”

For a while the prince laughed at him, with eyes wicked and clear. When he stopped, the ghost of the laugh hovered on his full lips for a while, Then his smile became a straight line, and the prince became quiet and still as he looked at the cartographer. The cartographer felt as if his very soul was being read. He felt afraid. The sense of unease of a while before was coiling in his belly and transforming into something different, infinitely bigger, under which weight he was pinned down and helpless, like an animal in a trap.

The prince drew near. Very slowly, he placed his hand on the cartographer’s neck, and he asked him again, with a voice soft and low, “Are you lost?”

The cartographer felt dizzy, with a lump in his throat and his mouth so dry, like it was sizzling with minuscule incandescent nails. Was he lost?

Losing your marbles losing your temper losing your bearings. Losing ground, as in- disintegrating.

All the things one did when lost were exciting and potentially dangerous, and the cartographer had always avoided them. It wasn’t just a matter of deontology. It was in his very nature, at the root of his work as a geographer; it was in the way he solved interminable equations and remained calm, even when he struggled in the maze of intricate calculations he loved so much. Sometimes there was the nagging insecurity, true, as if the end of the last equation was very far and all in all quite unsubstantial, but he always managed to push the fear somewhere in the back of his mind.

That was before, though. The prince moved his hand from the cartographer’s neck to his cheek, then from his cheek to the nape of his neck, and looked at him again, and kissed him lightly on the mouth. The cartographer didn’t flinch and didn’t move, not even when the prince pulled away.

“I think- I think I might be a bit lost,” admitted the cartographer, and he felt something inside of him unraveling. He capitulated with a sense of triumph that he didn’t think he would ever feel, his lips on the prince’s, who was smiling.

“I think you’ll need a map.”

“I thought they were worth nothing.” “It’s a different map. This one has people; I’m in there too.”

The prince rummaged in the inner pocket of his coat and found a sheet of parchment, elaborately folded. It wasn’t a common map; it didn’t look like anything the cartographer could design in this life. It only opened with secret words, but the prince knew them all so the map unfolded for them; then the cartographer found himself, and the outline of the forest started to fade, and then the prince, and Remus Lupin woke up.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how to add footnotes! But you should know that "Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things" is Tobler's firts law of geography. No, I have no idea who he is either.  
> I think when I first wrote the fiction I was a bit stuck and looked for geography-related cool quotes, because "There’s no such thing as too much information. There are only good maps and bad maps" and "A geographer is never lost. It’s just fieldwork. Accidental fieldwork." are definitely slightly modified quotes. While the second one is from geographer Nicholas Chrisman, I can't quite put my finger on the first one. I'll let you know.


End file.
